Wednesday, 29 May 2013

The Eternal Question Unravelled

Recently a new
Psychiatric Manual came out, called DSM, which stands for the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. No wonder they abbreviated it. Yet,
even so, the manual misses the point. It fails to tackle the eternal question
of the chicken and the egg.

Who cares?

Perhaps we can ask the chicken
when it gets to the other side of the street.

The question remains, however,
which came first: the mind or the brain. Is the mind a byproduct of the brain,
or the other way around? Unless we can answer this question we ought to be very
careful in our attempts to alter the chemical balance of the brain, which it
took nature a few million years to develop. Unless we’re sure that nature has
no idea what she’s doing, that we can do better, then the old adage should
hold: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, or… we might make it a lot worse.

Yes, there are exceptions when
psychiatry can help. There are always exceptions. But in Canada, during the
last 5 years, the use of psychotherapeutic drugs has increased by 27.7%. Have
27.7% of Canadians gone crazy in the last five years? Or, perhaps, the
psychiatrists suffer from normal brains. Normal means average, middling,
ordinary…

We are all different.

Flooding the human brain with
psychotherapeutic drugs is like trying to repair a car when the driver makes
mistakes. If we diagnose mechanical malfunctions in the car, shouldn’t we
repair it before drugging the driver…

Hence the Eternal Question, which
came first, the mind or the brain.

Neuroscience assures us that, for
the most part, ‘normal’ brains do not vary that much. If so, then why can’t I
compose as Mozart did? Or write like Shakespeare? Or come up with the Quantum
Theory?

Because their cars, I mean
brains, had a different driver. The driver is the mind, the brain is the means
through which it manifests itself.

It is the old story. The vast
majority of medical profession, and that includes psychiatry, treats the
symptoms, not the causes of malfunctions. Until that changes, we shall continue
to tread the wheel of Awagawan, to walk in circles, without advancing on the
evolutionary scale. The only benefit will continue to be derived by
psychochemical concerns that will continue to make billions out of our
ignorance.

Ancient religions made a feeble attempt to point us in the
right directions. The Torah states that god created men and then… only later,
gave us skins. It doesn’t take much intelligence to figure out that we existed
before we entered physical constructs, our physical bodies, to continue on our
evolutionary trek. My Dictionary
of Biblical Symbolism attempts to unveil at least some of the truth
lost in antiquity. Until we rediscover it most of us will not evolve, but
continue to devolve until we revert to a primitive state. Then, perhaps, we
shall start again. Perhaps we shall understand better the next time.

About Me

An architect, sculptor, and prolific writer was educated in Poland and England. Since 1965 he has resided in Canada. His special interests cover a broad spectrum of arts, sciences, and philosophy. His fiction and non-fiction attest to his particular passion for the scope and the development of Human Potential. Under his real name, he published seven non-fiction books sharing his vision of reality. He also composed two collections of poems in his original native tongue in which he satirizes his view of the world while paying homage to Bozena Happach's sculptures. As an architect [RIBA, MRAIC, OAQ ret.] he designed a number high rise buildings in Montreal, including Regency Hyatt Hotel (now Delta), Place Mercantile, Headquarters for the Mutual Alliance, as well as a number of low and middle rise structures for private clients. In the National Capital he was the associate in charge of design of Royal Bank Headquarters on Sparks Street.